Sunday, October 4, 2009

My First Netbook(s)

I bought 2 x HP Mini 110 for P21,950 each today to replace the 2 x old telemarketing PC desktops at the store. I got one unit from PCX Shaw and another at PCX Katipunan because each branch only keeps inventory of one unit.

When first booted up, the HP Mini goes into a sell-install mode of its pre-loaded Windows XP Home Edition. It comes with Microsoft Works (is there anyone who actually use that suite?) with 160GB HDD and 1GB RAM. The speed is actually pretty good. I was expecting a much slower machine with the Intel Atom.

The Mini has 3 x USB ports, 1 x ethernet port, and of course, built-in wifi. There's a VGA output port and, surprisingly, a built-in card reader that can read SD/MMC cards. Unfortunately, it doesn't support CF, which is what I use for my Canon cameras.

What does still take getting used to is the 1024x576 screen resolution. The almost 2:1 aspect ratio looks really strange at first -- wide and short. Opening GMail on screen requires a lot of vertical scrolling. But overall, I'm pretty happy with the battery life. The Atom really does perform much better when it comes to energy consumption.

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